Beum Robert

Timely access to Emergency Department (ED) Chief Complaint (CC) data, before the definitive diagnosis is established, allows for early outbreak detection and prompt response by public health officials.BioSense 2.0 is a cloud-based application that securely collects, tracks, and shares ED data from participating hospitals around the country. Denver Health (DH) is one of several Colorado hospitals contributing ED Chief Complaint data to BioSense 2.0. In August 2013, ED clinicians reported an increase in patients presenting with excited delirium, possibly related to synthetic marijuana (SM). We used this event to test the use of CC field of ED data for detection of a novel public health event (i.e., serious adverse events related to synthetic marijuana use) not currently categorized in the BioSense syndromic surveillance library.

Objective

The aims of this presentation is to use ED chief complaint data, to test BioSense 2.0 for detection of a novel public health event (i.e., serious adverse events related to synthetic marijuana use) not currently categorized in the BioSense syndromic surveillance library.

NSSP, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveillance system, allows timely detection of emergency department (ED) trends by matching chief complaint (CC) text or diagnosis (DX) codes to established syndrome criteria [1, 2]. No CDC syndrome definition currently exists for marijuana-related visits. Accidental child ingestions and over-consumption of edible products are an emerging concern [3, 4]. A validated marijuana syndrome will allow health departments with access to ED data to measure relative trends and disparities in marijuana-related ED visits.

Objective

To evaluate methods of measuring marijuana-related emergency department visits at Denver metropolitan area hospitals participating in the National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP).